A list that the girl gamer in my group passed along....
Girl gamers. Evidently, we’re difficult to figure out. Lucky for you, I’ve compiled this nifty little handbook to give you some hints.
1.We want to control the entire game... and you.
You think we want control of such a rag-tag group of guys? I’d rather go bobbing for apples in a deep fryer. If I wanted to control you, I’d show up at the game with a chair and a whip. Sit and ponder that, friend.
2.We’re there because you’re there.
A girl gamer, a REAL girl gamer, is there because she wants to be. Let me ask you this: Do you think you’re charming enough to make a girl unwillingly spend an entire evening with a bunch of people who get that excited about rolling dice? I thought not.
3.We make an effort to date every gamer in the group.
You got us there. We actually keep lists of the gamers we haven’t dated yet, and we check them off as we go. I got extra Girl Gamer Points (GGPs) because I dated all the eligible guys in our group and then managed to cause a major schism, causing half the people to quit talking to the other half. I traded my GGPs in for some rulebooks and a new dice bag and now I’m on the lookout for new victims… Get real.
4.We should be in charge of dinner and/or cleanup.
The next time you think about saddling the girl gamer with dinner preparations, consider her character first. If she’s playing a bitter extraterrestrial terrorist who hates everyone without provocation and dabbles in torture on the side because it’s fun, it’s probably not a good idea to ask. If her character is primarily engaged in kissing up and crocheting, go ahead. Ask.
5.We’re only interested in playing sex kittens or innocent ingénue-types.
Hello, Pot. I’m Kettle. You’re black.
Sure, girl gamers have schticks. So do you, Mr. Lone Wolf… and you, Mr. Combat Monster. And, while we’re at it, let me ask you a question… How many of your characters wear black trenchcoats? Whose brilliant idea was it to give all the bad-asses black trenches?
6.We are utterly incapable of understanding the rules.
Once, I heard a gamer comment, “Hey, man, she’s a girl. Girls don’t get the rules; it’s like a math thing or something.” Buddy, I’ll out-math you any time… and then I’ll tear you into tiny little pieces and eat you for breakfast. We are quite capable of understanding the rules, if you’d explain them in something that approximates English, or loosen your death-hold on the rulebook and just let us read them for ourselves.
7.We flutter our eyelashes at GMs to get our way.
I did that once. The GM very politely gave me what I wanted and, then, I realized I didn’t want it after all (because, as we all know, a good GM gives you what you want and then makes you regret having ever asked). The end result was that I had to extract my foot from my mouth. If you let girl gamers walk all over you as a player or a GM, more fool you. You need to get out and date more, friend.
8.We hate other girl gamers.
Well, sure! Why not? After all, other girl gamers might hog all the GGPs and then we’d be out some valuable prizes. We have to protect our territory, after all. Get real. If a true girl gamer can’t stand another girl in your group, it’s either a personal thing or maybe that girl is one of those fake-scheming-break-up-the-group types we’ve been discussing.
9.We don’t appreciate a good combat.
Correction: We do appreciate a good combat. What we don’t do is a) get sexually aroused over it or b) spend hours upon hours memorizing the caliber and number of shots for a revolver that was last used with regularity in the 1950s. We’ve got better things to do than memorize gun statistics. Like planning out how to spend out GGPs, for instance.
10.Because we are girls, you cannot hope to understand anything about us, including our roleplaying.
Well… maybe there’s a bit of truth in that one, after all.
